


A Quiet Life (A Handshake)

by georgescatcafe



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Fluff and Angst, King George - Freeform, M/M, Marshal Sapnap, Non-Graphic Violence, Pining, Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF) - Freeform, knight dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27598799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/georgescatcafe/pseuds/georgescatcafe
Summary: The first time he and Dream touch again after his coronation is an accident.He trips. Dream catches him.The strongest dam in Essempy will never break, no matter if it cracks or leaks. George is not the strongest dam.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 477





	A Quiet Life (A Handshake)

**Author's Note:**

> title from "no surprises" by radiohead

George isn’t sure what to think as the crown is placed atop his head. It’s heavy, and when he had touched it the night before, waiting, hesitating, it was cool to his fingers. Even now, he feels the cold metal as it rests, nestled in his hair.

In his hands, George holds the orb and scepter, and they’re just as heavy as the crown. With them, he can’t use his hands, can’t carry anything else, only the duty that’s been given to him. George looks out across the crowd. This isn’t a celebration, it’s a shackling. 

The ceremony passes with ease. George is the crowned King. He’s never wanted to be anything less.

* * *

“So… you’re King now.”

George looks back to see his knight standing in the doorway, cloaked in shadow. He nods, and the knight steps forward. George turns fully to greet him. “I thought you wanted this.”

“I do,” Dream replies. He comes closer. “For you.”

George raises a brow.

“Everything you could ever want,” Dream says. “Money, power. When you ride into battle, George, you’ll look so—,” he cuts himself off, clears his throat, “there’s nothing you could ask for that couldn’t be given.”

 _That’s not true._ George swallows. “I’ve got the world at my fingertips.”

Dream nods. “It’s what you deserve.” His fingers twitch. George looks at them, wishes he could take them in his own—if only he weren’t King, if only he weren’t a coward. He wonders if Dream wishes the same. When he meets Dream’s eyes once more, the knight is watching him. His gaze is green, like grass, like the valleys and hills that he and George used to whisper of escaping to. His gaze, deeper, closer to his iris, is brown, like the bark of trees, like cool, damp earth. George can’t actually tell the true colors of Dream’s eyes. Dream taught him the colors, murmured them to him when they were kids, close and personal, trying his best to describe it in the clumsy way kids can. George had loved every second of it. “I really wanted this for you, George. I want you to be happy.”

But being King won’t grant George happiness. But Dream doesn’t know that. George smiles. “I’m really happy, Dream. Thank you.”

Dream smiles back. It doesn’t reach his eyes. George wonders if his own did.

* * *

George does like the power. He likes the money. In terms of materials, maybe Dream’s right, this is all he could want. He’s never been happier. But each day he rises and sees the knight, catches his eye over breakfast, bumps into him in the courtyard, and each day the ache in his chest grows worse. Within him lies a want nothing but Dream can fulfill. He wishes he could cut it out, take a knife to his chest and be done with it, hands bloody, heart happy. But he can’t.

So he aches.

* * *

There is no pressure for George to take on a consort of any sort, and for that, George is actually happy, smiling to himself the minute he’s alone after hearing the news. Even if there were pressure, George doesn’t think he would give in.

He doesn’t think he can give in.

His hands are tied with tasks as King and he can’t afford love, can’t even afford an heir. Not so soon. Not with Dream still so near. George’s gaze drops to the floor when he accidentally sees Dream across the hall. When they pass each other, George fights the urge to reach out and grab, hold _onto_ and not let go, with all he has.

* * *

George supposes he would love antagonizing the marshal, Sapnap, if Sapnap weren’t as entangled as tightly with Dream as he is. 

“He seems sadder nowadays,” Sapnap tells George as he saddles the other’s horse, not something either of them are wont to do, but today seems to be an exception. He runs a hand down the mare’s flank when he’s done, giving her a firm pat before turning to George. “I always ask him if he’s alright, but he just, y’know, shrugs me off.”

“He does that,” George says.

Sapnap nods.

George climbs onto his horse. “He is, though, isn’t he?” he asks. Sapnap looks up at him. “Alright.”

“For once,” Sapnap says, as he takes a couple steps back, allowing George to guide his horse outside the stable, “I don’t actually know.”

George’s ride is spent with only the company of unease. At one point, he stops the mare, nausea rising in his throat, only to dry heave in the bushes as the Sun passes over high in the sky.

When he returns, Sapnap is gone, and George leaves putting up his horse to the stable boy.

The rest of the day is unproductive. He spends most of it in his room.

* * *

The first time he and Dream touch again after his coronation is an accident.

They walk, silent, side by side, down a corridor, both headed in the same direction. George refuses to look over. Dream seems to refuse to look away. Under his gaze, George prickles, tingles breaking out under his skin, pinpricks of feelings he’d wish go away.

And then he trips. And Dream catches him.

The strongest dam in Essempy will never break, no matter if it cracks or leaks. George is not the strongest dam.

* * *

He starts planning after that. George has never been one for affection, but he craves Dream’s touch like a flower craves the Sun. And so he plans, every move he makes an effort to get Dream’s hands on him again. It feels perverse, wrong, and maybe it is—as a king, he shouldn’t want this. As Dream’s friend, he shouldn’t want this.

But he does, and it’s too late to deny these feelings now.

Dream has touched his hands, his shoulders, his waist, his arms. It’s all fleeting. It’s not enough.

He’s taking a break from work—tallies, taxes, treatises mocking him behind his eyes—in a landing between the second and third floor when he spies Dream and Sapnap. Together, they walk, and George envies their easy affection. Dream shoves, Sapnap shoves back. George wants that. They keep distance between them still. It’s friendly. They’re friends. George wants more than that. George thinks he might go insane.

He looks away. It’s best not to dwell on it. There’s other things to do.

* * *

George thinks he’s alone on the trail when there’s a sudden burst of sound—the stomping of hooves—and Dream is next to him, atop his stallion, elegant and proud. For a moment, George sees him as King, sees the crown, the cape. It’s beautiful. 

It’s cold.

George smiles at him. “Protecting me from bandits?”

“I like your company,” Dream replies. “Besides, bandits this close to the castle?”

 _I like your company, too_ , George wants to say. “Just a joke,” comes out instead. 

Dream grins. “You’re so funny, George.”

“You sound like Sapnap,” George replies, “when he’s making fun of me. Are you making fun of me, Dream?”

“I’d _never_ , George,” Dream says, and it feels so much like the past, this easy banter between them, that George almost forgets the weight of the crown, the chasm that lies between them. Almost.

Needless to say, most of his smiles are faked after that.

* * *

George has never been in battle, nor does he ever want to be in one. The declaration of war that sits upon his desk spits in his face and tells him to get over it.

Dream reads it over his shoulder, his presence a steady warmth George knows if he weren’t King he’d easily fall back into. Instead he merely keeps it close by.

“We have to answer,” Dream tells him. “We can’t leave something like this undecided.”

“Get Sapnap,” George replies.

Growing up, he thought it had been a cliché, but he finds himself nodding along when Sapnap announces to his men that they’ll ride at dawn.

* * *

“Dream,” George says, war on the horizon, but only one question on his mind.

“Yeah?” Dream doesn’t look up from the map he’s surveying.

“When I had been crowned,” George turns to the other, heart pounding in his chest, “you were telling me about what I’d get as King. You also said—you said when riding into battle, I’d look—I’d look so—”

“There aren’t many things I think you shouldn’t say before battle,” Dream finally rolls up the map, looks over at George, “but that’s one of them.”

“But you’ll tell me still, right?” George tightens his grip on his horse’s reins. “Right?”

“When we’re on the other side of the war,” Dream tells him. “Then I’ll know it’s true. And I’ll tell you.”

Neither bring it up again.

* * *

The sky is black. Dream tells him it’s red. “Passion,” George replies. “Heat.”

From behind them, a rumble. Something explodes. George takes a steadying breath. “Blood,” he says.

“Don’t think about that,” Dream tells him, slicing through an approaching soldier, an enemy. George wonders if his family will miss him. If he even has a family. George lifts his shield to block the sword of another. Dream doesn’t have a family. George and Sapnap could be his family. Even if they weren’t, George would still miss him. Even now, George misses him.

George runs his sword straight through a man. He leans over and vomits on a corpse. He feels Dream’s warmth against his back. If George died, he bets Dream would miss him. He wants to know what Dream was going to say. George swings his sword towards the sound of footsteps. He slices a soldier’s leg open. The blood that spills out is black.

Don’t think about that.

* * *

George never wants to go into battle again. He hates battle, hates war—he hates being King.

“I love the power,” he tells Dream. “I love the money.” He tugs bitterly at the petitions now spread across his desk. “But is that worth all this?”

“Isn’t it?” Dream asks. “I thought you were happy.”

“I’m—,” George doesn’t think he can say it. _I’m happiest with you._ He was happiest when they were kids, tagging and chasing in the grass, shouting and screaming in the forest, shrieking and swimming in the lake. He was happiest when they could touch, when they could shove each other, push and pull as equals, not as King and servant. He was happiest when blood didn’t stain his hands crimson and when the only circle of gold he knew was the halo around Dream’s hair and not the crown that sits on his own head. “I’m trying to be.”

Silence.

Dream unsheathes his sword. They sit on a bench in the courtyard, and Dream draws the blade through the dirt. George watches as the metal glints in the light.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m trying really hard to be happy.”

He hesitates.

“It wasn’t even the fight,” he says. “Not really. I can get my hands dirty. But not like this. Not when all they did was serve their own King. I like destruction; I like a mess.”

“But not like this.”

George nods.

Dream sighs. “I’m sorry, too. I really thought you wanted this, George.”

“It’s not like you made me King yourself,” George replies. “Not like this was a long time coming.”

“I could’ve done _something_ ,” Dream says. “You, me, Sapnap—the three of us—we could’ve left. Don’t you think?”

George shakes his head. “I still like Essempy. I don’t want to leave. I just… don’t want it to come with all this.” He doesn’t specify what _this_ is. He doesn’t have to.

Dream takes a breath. “Well—”

“What were you going to say?” George cuts him off. “I’ll look so what, Dream? We're not about to go off to war; there's no battle to fight right now. Just… tell me.”

“Beautiful,” Dream replies. “You’ll look so beautiful. And you did.”

George freezes.

“I’m sorry,” Dream says.

There’s been too many apologies today. George looks over at him. Dream stares down his sword, eyes fixated on some point in the dirt. George places a hand on his arm. They’re in the courtyard. He resists the panicked urge to lower his hand. Dream looks over at him.

“If you were to die,” George says, “I would miss you.”

Dream turns, fully facing him. George puts his hands on his shoulders, holds tight. “Even when you’re next to me now, I miss you.”

“I wish I had run away with you, George,” Dream tells him. “Just so I could do this, and not feel guilty.”

George tenses. “Do what?”

Dream kisses him.

The strongest dam in Essempy will never break, no matter if it cracks or leaks. George doesn’t want to be the strongest dam.

When Dream pulls away, George tightens his hold on him where his hands have slid off his shoulders down to around his arms. “Don’t feel guilty,” he says. Their foreheads rest against one another, and George closes his eyes, every breath Dream exhales one he inhales.

“A knight isn’t supposed to be in love with his king,” Dream replies.

“A king isn’t supposed to be in love with his knight.”

George never wants to forget the feeling of Dream’s lips on his.

* * *

“I’ll change the rules,” George tells him later. “I’m a king. I can do that. Just for you and me, for us—I’ll change the rules.”

Dream runs a hand through his hair, and George leans into the touch. He’s the sunflower; Dream is the Sun. “If it makes you happy,” Dream tells him.

“It would,” George replies. “And if I get told no, if I’m shut down—”

“You won’t be,” Dream says. “I won’t let that happen. Sapnap won’t let that happen.”

It’s nice, knowing Sapnap is on their side.

“I just want to see you happy.”

“I am,” George tells him. “I really am.” And finally, he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> me: no more dnf society has progressed past the need for dnf
> 
> also me: *writes 2.3k of dnf*
> 
> BUT I WANTED TO GET THIS FIC OUT.... so like.. george is king on the smp now.... lol <3 i was actually gonna write prince george x stable boy sapnap a week or so ago but y'all know i'm lazy af so oh also guess where i got the name "essempy" from 😭😭 i'm so sorry my humor is so trash
> 
> ok sorry this was so ooc and rushed and messy i just wanted to get words on a page :/ but hopefully u guys liked it anyway!! ty for reading ^^ <3
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ywywbunny) & [tumblr](https://georgescatcafe.tumblr.com)


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